Amnesia

Guest Author - Lesley Aeschliman

Amnesia is an anime based on a visual novel series by Idea Factory.

The main character of the series is a female who has lost all of her memories prior to August 1; this includes forgetting what her own name is. In the series, the main protagonist is never referred to by name, not even by her co-workers. However, it is revealed in the anime series that she is 19 years old.

A spirit named Orion follows her around, and it is revealed that the main character lost her memories because Orion's spirit bumped into hers. Orion tells her that in order to regain her memories, she has to interact with the other people who are important in her life.

There are four male characters who become a central focus in the story. Each of the males are based on the symbolic suits from a playing card deck: Heart, Spade, Diamond, and Club. Shin is the Heart, Ikki is the Spade, Toma is the Diamond, and Kent is the Clover. All of the characters work at the same cafe.

Shin is friends with both the main character and with Toma, and he is a third year high school student studying to get into a university; he also comes across as being the "cool" character. Toma, meanwhile, is a second year university student, and he tends to treat the main character a bit more like a child.

Ikki is a fourth year university student, and he has a lot of women fawning over him; he also has the most obvious romantic interest in the main character. Kent is a university graduate who wears glasses and is the "smart" one of the group; he is also best friends with Ikki.

From the main setup of having the female lead with the four potential love interests, it's very obvious that this series is based on a visual novel series. However, I appreciate the fact that the main character is an amnesiac that has to work at regaining her memories; this twist brings something interesting to the story. Amnesia definitely shows a lot of potential in its first episode, and hopefully that potential will manifest itself in future episodes of the series.

After seeing the first episode of Amnesia, I would personally recommend the series to anime viewers who are 14 or 15 years of age and older.